This week was all about the shop, shop, shop and spending time adding lots of new and gorgeous paper goodies to it. I felt like my blog was a little bit neglected and a little bit sad but sometimes there just isn’t enough hours in the day to do both! I’m so glad to have a window of opportunity now to share with you the work of Dutch artist Maarten Brinkman. I was admiring his art earlier this week when I should have been working (naughty me), so it’s nice now to admire a little more without feeling guilty!

More often with paper art, I see perfectly precise, smooth, sharp, paper cut OUCH! kind of edges. Not torn, jagged and uneven ones. There is something refreshingly imperfect, incomplete and impermanent about Maarten’s work that has really captured my heart.

Maarten says he enjoys working with paper because it’s fragile, perishable and easy to edit. He is amazed that a material with qualities as these can be used to make monumental structures that are also robust and resilient.

I really love that these works are as much about negative space as they are about positive space.
I can see exactly how they have been made. The process of tearing and cutting paper to create a new and interesting form is so clear and I’m seriously inspired to give it a go myself. To tear or to cut? Ooooo I can’t decide – I’m torn! (sorry, I couldn’t help myself : )

Late last year Maarten initiated a project titled Papier op School or Paper School that involved paper art made by visually impaired school kids. Amazing results. You really must take a look!